Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repackaged a cobbled together pack of old lies. He is trying to sell it to gullible Americans as new and startling revelations about an Iranian nuclear program that doesn’t exist.

Bibi gave a video presentation at the Israeli defense ministry yesterday. He had some props and a big screen for slides. He warned about Iran’s “Amad Plan” to secretly and illegally manufacture nuclear bombs.

It was a rather clumsy sleight of hand. A closer look reveals the information he presented is old stuff repackaged. The IAEA knew about Amad in 2011. The international organization declared several times Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program and stopped doing nuke research back in 2003.

Bibi is trying to sell this old and known material as a pack of new revelations and thus build up a consensus to dump the JCPOA. It looks like Trump might use this recycled crap to disavow the nuke deal next month.

There has been a lot of traffic back and forth between Washington and Tel Aviv by Pompeo, Bolton, and Israeli officials over the last few days.

Prior to Bibi’s show, a huge explosion in Hama, Syria took out around 30 Iranians and Syrians at the Brigade 47 arms depot. The explosion was recorded as a 2.6 magnitude earthquake. Another attack hit near a military air base in Aleppo province, according to reports.

In the next few days, something big is likely to happen in Syria or Iran, possibly both. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton are fanatical neocons determined to take Iran down a few pegs, if not give it the Iraq treatment, as the neocons have planned for a couple decades now.

Ditto Syria.

Question is, what will Russia do if Israel, along with the United States and the Saudis, pull off a full-fledged attack to destroy Syria and give Bashar al-Assad the Gaddafi treatment?

Dumping the JCPOA is the first step. The Iranians swear they will to do something drastic if Trump cans the agreement, even going so far as to pull out of the NPT.

This will give Israel the excuse it needs to bomb Iran’s civilian nuclear sites. But Israel can’t do this. They don’t have the resources, and can’t proceed without help from their friends in Washington.

That will, of course, mean a wider war in the region. Russia will be caught in the middle. Will they sit back and let it happen? If they react, will it precipitate the Big One, World War III?